GURPS Nordlond Bestiary Kickstarter

Douglas Cole of Gaming Ballistic is having another GURPS related kickstarter. This time it is a bestiary for his Nordlond setting for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Nordlond as setting is centered around the culture of Norse Vikings. Normally a RPG supplement like this is fairly setting specific. Some of the creature that Doug has preview have norse origins. But he also repurposes many common DnD style fantasy monsters give them a viking twist. Making this work useful for expanding the number of creature the referee has for a Dungeon Fantasy or GURPS campaign.

Doug explains it best.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is purposefully generic: It is Powered by GURPS, after all. The Norðlond setting is not generic, borrowing from the literary tradition of the Viking culture. The sagas of looting, pillaging, and raiding for wealth and fame made a natural match for a game with a tag-line of “Smash Evil for Fun and Profit.”

Even with that in mind, the monsters here can be—and should be—repurposed and transplanted to other campaigns. Many of them are thinly disguised transplants from other cosmologies anyway: The nautamaðr is clearly based on the Minotaur; the Blóðughúfa, or “bloody hat” is the redcap, a fixture of Northumbrian folklore, perhaps derived or parallel to the Irish fear dearg, meaning “red man,” said to wear a red coat and cap.  Animals—normal, giant, and dire—don’t require any work to move between campaigns. Much as the player characters pillage loot, GMs should pillage the worked examples here to make their lives easier when running games in any campaign.

My view that this type of work for GURPS needs to be support and encourage. GURPS is great as a toolkit however it needs the same range of support as other similar types of RPGs for referee who don't have the time to sift through all the options. The Nordlond bestiary helps a lot with this.

The Nordlond Bestiary also has a enemies section of NPC characters to use in a campaign.

Nordlond Bestiary and Enemies

The Citadel at Norðvorn Kickstarter

Douglas Cole over on Gaming Ballistic has just launched a Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter. A mini-setting called The Citadel at Norðvorn. If you like viking themed campaigns and his last adventure, Hall of Judgement this should be of interest. 

This also continues the setting that Doug has been building through his Dungeon Fantasy and Dragon Heresy products. I am interested in seeing where he goes with this as the format of the product builds partly on his experiences with my Majestic Wilderlands campaign.

My first Fantasy Trip Aid also useful for GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy

A long time ago I made a set of customized graph paper to use with GURPS after I purchased the Cardboard Heroes: Dungeon Floors.

As you can see from the image below, SJ Games cleverly squashed the hexes to allow them to align with a rectangular grid. I drew up some graph paper so I can easily draw dungeons for my Majestic Wilderlands when I used GURPS as the rules.

After pledging to the The Fantasy Trip kickstarter I found a copy of In the Labyrinth for a reasonable price on eBay and bought it. In there and in the original Wizard which I also have. The Fantasy Trip has the concept of magahexes, a larger hex encompassing seven small hexes. It is used to adjudicate long ranges, area spells and other effects.

So I pulled out the old file and added a layer with Mega Hex border.

You can download it from here.

It is layered with the border, hexes, megahexes, and grid on separate layers. The advantage of this is that you can draw or transpose dungeon laid out on a grid to use with the hex map format of GURPS or The Fantasy Trip.

Dungeons Fantasy RPG for GURPS has arrived at the Attic!

As long time readers of this blog know I been a fan of GURPS for thirty years. Believe it or not there was a time when GURPS was the fourth or fifth most popular RPG on the market back in 2004.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is designed to make it easy for people to get into playing and using GURPS for their campaigns. It does this by being presented as a traditional fantasy RPG. It tells you how to make characters, how to handle encounters and combat, gives you spells, monsters, and treasures to use. Plus there is an adventure included called I Smell a Rat!

It not a new edition of GURPS. Everything here works with the core books as is. But gone are things not relevant to the Dungeon Fantasy genre. Added are things that are useful for fantasy campaigns with GURPS.

So what do you get?

A sneak preview of a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Character

Over on the kickstarter, the SJ Games crew released a preview of a Dungeon Fantasy Character.

Lyndon Glibtongue

First off kudos for releasing a Bard character first. There been considerable debate over the fact the project is oriented towards Dungeon Fantasy and that all that it will support is hack and slash gameplay. Looking over the Bard character you can see that the character has plenty of skills (Carousing, Savoir Faire. Merchant) that could be used in pure roleplaying encounters. 

Also as far as being a GURPS character it looks pretty standard which should make using the rest of the GURP line pretty easy to use if you want too. Of course compared to a OD&D character there is a lot more there, but I think people will know that when they try this game. 

The key will be how easy it is to make this character? With the 4th edition core books it is a matter of going through voluminous lists which takes considerable time and very confusing to a novice. With the Dungeon Fantasy RPG hopefully it is as easy as going through the 2nd edition boxed set with its 72 pages of character rules. 

Dungeon Fantasy is Funded!

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG powered by GURPS is Funded! It is getting to be a nice package and the add-ons seem pretty sensible like a pregenerated PCs to be included with the GM Screen.

Big GURPS Dungeon Fantasy News

Well hot damn, SJ Games is doing a kickstarter to release a powered by GURPS Dungeon Fantasy RPG. And it is a boxed set no less with five books inside.

While I wasn't expecting a boxed set, this is something that I been advocating for a long time over on the GURPS forum. There are posts from me from as early as 2008 saying that this should be done. As well as the equivalents for the other major genres like Science Fiction and Horror. If this is successful we may see similar Powered by GURPS RPGS from SJGames.

Also note they are stressing the Ready to Run aspect which was a point I kept hammering to point where I was probably very annoying to a lot of the GURPS staff.

Back in the early 2000s after a few campaign of GURPS 4e under my belt I wished for three things from SJ Games

• Better support for the fantasy genre. Which I got in the Dungeon Fantasy
• Ready to run out of box GURPS RPG. Which is now happening.
• A Third party content program.

Dare I hope for a triple? Probably will have to wait a while considering how long it took for the first two.

I keep everybody posted on further developments.

So you want to be an Earth monk in GURPS

A friend of mine is starting his first GURPS Fantasy campaign (150 pt characters 35 disads 5 quirks). One of his friends wants to be a monk character like from Avatar the anime cartoon. This monk has powers relating to his connection to the earth. Being new to GURPS my friend asked me for help. The players wants, martial arts, a foot stomp, stone armor, and the ability to damage with stones.

So I made a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monk characters. Cut out all the chi powers except for Chi Talent, and reduced his stats to ST 10, DX 14, IQ 10, HT 11. The character still has some of the cinematic martial arts skill effected by Chi like Power Blow, Immovable stance, etc.

In place of chi powers I made the following. Modified from templates I found in the GURPS Advantage PDF that was created on SJ Games GURPS forum.

I added the Power Modification:Chi from Dungeon Fantasy I to all these powers.

For all this I noted how many character points per dice or point the player needs to spend to boost them with XP.

Stomp Shockwave (10pts)
You do an all-out attack to stomp on the ground. When your chi connects to the earth a powerful shock emanates from your feet, knocking every  person within 2 yards back. Doesn't do any other damage.

Stats
Crushing Attack 5d (2pts per d6)
Emanation -20%, Area Effect 2 yards +50%, Environ: Not against airborne target -20%, No Wounding -50%; Double Knockback +20%, All-Out -25%; NE: Leaves small craters on the ground -5%; Chi Talent -10%. (-60%)

Note: I replaced the original Explosion Enhancement with a 2 yd Area of Effect to keep the adjudication simple for my friend.

Stone Fists (5 points)
You can connect your chi to the earth to transform your hands into fist of stones. There is a price in that you lose the ability to manipulated find objects (gain Ham-Fisted disad) but you now can parry weapons or be parried by weapons without taking damage yourself.

Stats
Stretching I 5 pts
Force Extension +50%, Temp Disad. Short Arms, -0%, Temp Disad: Ham Fisted -10%, Takes Extra Time 4 seconds -30%, Chi Talent -10%. Total +0%

Note: Pretty much as is from GURPS Advantages except that the use of Chi Limitation means only 4 seconds instead of 8 seconds is needed.

Stone Throwing (12 points)
You draw on your chi to connect to the stones of the earth to form into a large mass to throw at your enemies! It takes one second to gather enough stones together to throw the next turn. Requires the Throwing skill to use properly. It is considered a Chi Talent

Stats
Crushing Attack 3d. 1/2D 50, Max 200, Acc 1, requires 1 turn to ready. (5 pts per d6 crushing)
Extra Time -10%, Increased Max, x2 +5%, Increased 1/2D x5 +10%, Inaccurate, Acc 1 -10%, Minimum Range 1/20 Max Range -10%, Power Modifier Chi -10% Total -25%

Stone Skin (13 pts)
Connecting your Chi to the earth draws up dozens of small pebbles and stones to form a second stony armorlike skin around your body. However it is only temporary and is chipped away by weapon attacks. It takes one hour to regenerate the stone skin after it is gone. It takes a ready action to activate.

Stats
Damage Resistance 5pts /lvl (1pt lvl) DR 8 (8 pts)
Ablative -80%; Flexible -20%; Force Field +20%; Total -80%

Regeneration: Fast 50 pts (5 points) (1 DR per minute)
DR Only -40%; Preparation: 1 hour -50%; Total -90%

Note: This was taken from one of the science fiction oriented portable shield generators. Instead of a "capacitor" it now requires one hour of "Meditation" and then a number of minutes equal the max DR to regenerate. I suspect at 1 pt per DR the player is going to be putting points into this.

Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen

It my turn next to run a campaign for the Monday night group and we are returning to GURPS and the Majestic Wilderlands. It will set Nomar as outlined in a previous post on this blog. I will share the details and handouts in a future post.

As I sat down to work on this. I stated pulling together the stat cards and templates I will be using to create the possible NPCs and creatures the players will be running into. Just I started I noticed that there was new Dungeon Fantasy release. DF 15: Henchmen.  Written by Peter V. Dell'Orto of Dungeon Fantastic and Sean "Kromm" Punch, GURPS Line Editor; it gives advice and templates on constructing henchmen/hirelings to run around with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy characters.

I was looking forward to this because this particular DF was spawned in part by the positive reaction to the NPC stat blocks found in the back of the DF Adventure 1, Mirror of the Fire Demon. And of course as  usual for SJ Games the resulting product is far more useful than just a collection NPC stat block would have been.

After a brief introduction and some commentary on the roll of henchmans and hireling it dives into the templates. They are presented in two sets, 125 point Henchman and 62 point Bargain Hirelings. The standard henchman includes ones like Agents, Archers, Brutes, Killers, Sages, etc. The Bargain Hirelings 62 point characters include cultists (for those characters with megalomania :-) ) Guards, Laborers and of course the Torch-bearer.

The 2nd half is talks extensively about the use of henchmen in a DF campaign. First section is using them as allies i.e. D&D style henchmen. Next is using them as hireling with commentary on loyalty. Following is one of the sections that make this supplement shine how to use these templates as low powered delvers. DF version of first level.

Then another excellent section about making custom delvers. Basically in GURPS you have templates which are a menu that distill the myriad character options into a simple menu so that you can build a specific archetype for your character. There is no rule saying that you have to remain in the template but rather it is an aid to quickly make new characters. In addition to template there are lens which modify a template to add abilities or complex options that cut across various archetypes.

In the Custom Delver section Peter and Sean detail a dozen or so lens that when combined with one of the standard or bargain henchmen makes a character equal in power to one of the DF Hero templates. For example taking the Standard Initiate plus the Priest custom lens will create a character equivalent to a Hero Druid.  Add a Veteran Lens to a Standard Squire will create a Hero Knight.

This transform the Henchmen book from a limited focus on NPCs to one that is useful for both GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS Fantasy.  There is support for referees quickly making NPCs that ran from 62 point to 250 points (With DF 1 Adventurers). You could add one of the lens to a 250 pt hero template to create a 375 point character.

I put this to immediate use in the handouts I am creating for help the players make characters for my upcoming campaign. At $8 it is a great deal for GURPS Referees and at 43 page can be easily printed as booklet. It also reads well on my iPad tablet.

Recommended.